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The Pitiful Best. The lessons that had gone into the making of a great captain were first learned in an ignorance shared by most of the U.S.'s professional soldiers. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Douglas MacArthur had 35 Flying Fortresses (early models without tail guns) and 90 fighters, mostly of indifferent capabilities. At the time, this air force seemed of some value, just as the eight battleships moored at Pearl Harbor seemed a powerful battle line. But almost half of that air force was destroyed on the ground on the first day, the rest swiftly whittled away by the more experienced Japs. In Australia, MacArthur got a new air commander, Lieut. General George H. Brett. But when Brett's airmen failed to stop a landing at Buna and Gona in New Guinea, Brett was relieved; MacArthur asked Washington for someone else.
General "Hap" Arnold picked George Kenney from behind a desk and sent him to Australia. "Sir, I am your airman here," said brisk, bantam-sized Kenney when he reported for duty.
MacArthur liked Kenney's drive and cocksureness, was soon calling him "George." Kenney, an airman's airman who was getting his first chance to prove it, liked MacArthur, especially when the General turned him loose to run his own air show without interference from groundlings. Like most ground generals of his day, Douglas MacArthur was not notably appreciative of the potentialities of air power. But he had flexibility of mind, and he learned.
Kenney fitted his new team swiftly into MacArthur's strategic plans. His first achievement was to fly a regiment of U.S. troops from Australia to Port Moresby, when the Japs were within 28 miles of pushing the Allies out of New Guinea. These troops helped the Australians to drive the enemy back across the Owen Stanleys. Then Kenney told the Chief he could fly soldiers in greater numbers across the mountains to Buna and Gona, land them there on strips cut out of the bristling kunai grass.
"But damn it, George, you'll kill them all," protested the General. Kenney said he was damned if he would; MacArthur was convinced. The bantam moved in men, ammunition, food, vehicles. MacArthur's coastal campaign (see map) was set.
West along the Coast. Kenney's combat airmen grew at their jobs. Their greatest victory was the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, where they sank every one of 2 2 ships in a Jap convoy headed south to reinforce the dug-in forces in the bitter fighting around Buna and Gona. In this technique Douglas MacArthur recognized one of the oldest principles of war—isolation of the battlefield—achieved with war's newest weapon. It was final proof that if he could control the sea north of New Guinea with air power and the help of the U.S. navy, he need not plow the 1,500 miles through New Guinea's jungle to the tip and the jump-off for the Philippines.